Hellboy Went Down to Georgia
by Margolo Blu
Summary: A short story with roots in a country classic. Irony runs rampant down in the deep south.


_There's no such thing as a fair deal with the devil. _

**Hellboy Went Down to Georgia**

"Crocodiles live this far north?" Hellboy asked, standing on the end of the dock. A pair of reptilian eyes set in a low brow and a long narrow snout peered up at him then sunk down in the muck.

"No sir," the boy, twelvish in age, with severely rotted teeth and stained overalls responding, "them there are alligators. They live as far north as North Carol-ee-na See, you don't see their teeth when they got their mouth closed. Crocs live farther south, down near Flor-ee-da and way ov'er in Africa."

"Ah really. You learned that here in the swamp?" Hellboy asked as he untied a rope from a dock post.

"No siree, read dat in a National Geographic from mah Pa. Whatcha doin way over here in the swamp? Der some kinda monster on da loose?" the boy asked as Hellboy jumped down a raft. It bobbed under his weight in the greenish brown water, but held.

"Skunk apes," Hellboy answered.

"Skunk apes?" the boy asked curiously, leaning down over the dock. "They live this fah north? I thod that they were only in Flor-ee-da."

"Nope," Hellboy smirked. "They live all over the place. People give them different names depending on the area. Sasquatch in the north west, big foot in the mid west and north east, Momo down in Missouri, Yeti or Abominable Snow in the Himalayas, the Alma in the Ural mountains. But they normally aren't found in Georgia, and these ones that have been sighted are causing problems with the locals. They needed to be—relocated."

"You learn that in a National Geographic?" the boy asked.

Hellboy smirked and scratched the back of his head and the Samurai style ponytail. "Yeah, National Geographic."

The boy handed Hellboy a rough hewn paddle, a flat paddle set on a long pole, more for pushing along the swamp bottom than paddling.

"Here," Hellboy said, passing a twenty dollar bill over to the boy. "Go buy yourself some National Geographics."

"Thanks Mister Hellboy," the boy exclaimed, tucking the twenty into the pocket of his overalls. "Thanks a bunch, 'preciated a lot. I'm gonna buy a lot of National Geographics."

Hellboy waved goodbye with large sweeping arcs of his lantern to the boy who stood on the dock. He set the lantern down on the raft and pushed along through the swamp.

Frankly, Hellboy preferred a haunted house or a rotting castle as the scene to a epic monster battle than the swamp. First off, they were normally dry, and if they were wet, it was just moisture on the surface of walls or floors. Here in the bayous, water permeated everything. He felt that even the rocks, if there were any rocks here, soaked the water up like a sponge. Second, when Hellboy was in a castle or an old house, he felt like he was in a place spared by time. One step out the door, he was back in modern times. Pushing through the bayous on the raft, Hellboy felt like he was actually traveling through time. Both the swamp and haunted places hid dangers beneath the surfaces, but somehow, Hellboy believed he felt more comfortable fighting invisible apparitions than treading through mud and facing unknown slimy bugs and worms.

It grew dark in the bayous, as if it could any darker. The eerie calls of birds faded into the squeaks and cries of night creatures and the chirping of frogs. Eyes of swamp critters glowed in the moss coated branches like the stars in the unseen night sky, blocked by skeleton trees whose bare branches bore hanging moss and fungi instead of leaves.

Hellboy flicked an electric light on at his side. At the sight of the sudden bright light, a dozen or so creatures, raccoons and possums, darted off deeper in the darkness of the swamp. There were the plops of crocodiles—er, alligators—ducking under the water into darkness and murkiness of an even greater degree than the forest.

In the distance, on an island, the only piece of solid ground Hellboy had seen since he left the boy on the dock, there was glow.

"A will-o-wisp?" Hellboy asked, his voice respectively hoarse. "In Georgia?"

The glow shook and sparked, and Hellboy's hopes were dashed when he realized it was nothing more than a common campfire. And that meant a person, a human person, since skunk apes could not start a fire. They have been noted digging through garbage cans and eating leftover TV dinners, but never cooking them over a fire.

Hellboy docked the raft beside the hollow carcass of a massive tree. He tied the rope around thick root and crawled onto the island, slipping only twice on the slick sides on the island.

Hellboy barely stepped into the glow of the fire when a voice, crackly and hoarse with obvious age and cockiness, spoke up.

"You came back for me? Didn't ya? You son of a bitch! You can't let anything rest!"

Blinding by the fire glow, Hellboy held his left hand up to fight the glare. An old man, as bony and bent as the trees, sat on the soften bump of a stump.

"Came back didn't ya? Didn't you learn the first time? You can't have it, you can't have me. I beat you Devil, beat you fair and square," the man said. "Had to come see me coz you knew I was almost on my deathbed. Well, you can't have it you God forsaken son of a bitch."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hellboy said. "Just exactly who are you and what is this what I can't have?"

"What? You don't remember me Satan? I'm Johnny the best damn fiddle player there's ever been. I'll tell you again you son of a bitch, I'm the best there's ever been. Even if time has not been kind to me through all these years and the swamp grows cold and I lose feeling in my limbs, I have been kept warm at the thought of beating you and it, it has kept me company. Never been able to lift the damn thing or play it, but it has been a reminder, a beautiful reminder when I bested old Beelzebub himself," The old man spoke up.

"I'm not Satan," Hellboy answered. But as far as he was concerned he could be. "And you're crazy."

"I'm not crazy, you're crazy, thinking you can come back here to get it back. I tell you, it's mine and it's hidden by the muck," Johnny said, spitting into the water. "It's mine. It's mine."

Hellboy, who was enjoying the feeling of solid land against his hooves, suddenly wanted to get back on his raft and paddle to the nearest Greyhound Bus Station. He started to step back, unnerved.

"What frightened Devil? Did I best you again? You can't have it and you can't have my soul. When I die, I'll go to heaven and I'll take it with me. Wouldn't that make hell even hotter for you?"

"Yeah, whatever, you old coot," Hellboy said, turning around and walking away from the fire.

As he walked away, his hoof smacked off of something, something hard, so hard that for the first time in his life, he stubbed a toe. Now he knew what it was like for his human companions to stub a toe, and now he felt empathy for them. Johnny cackled, his laugh drowning the frog chirps and bat screeches. Hellboy turned his flashlight on and onto the object that caused him discomfort. Something gleamed in the beam of the flashlight. What ever it was, it was golden and manmade.

The ancient man screamed.

Hellboy tried to pull the object up with his normal sized left hand, but he had to take his right hand and pull it from the muck with a loud slurping sound. The earth and the old man were both equally unwilling to give whatever it was up.

In his massive right hand, Hellboy held a solid gold fiddle, almost hundred pounds in weight, by its neck. Spots not covered by algae and muck shined in the firelight like the eyes of nocturnal creatures.

"Is this what you were talking about?" Hellboy said. "This thing?"

"NOOOOO!" the man screeched like a crow. "No! Don't take it! It's mine. I won it from you!"

Hellboy stepped back, testing the man.

"Nooo! Give it back!" Johnny screamed. "Satan, I'll give my soul to have that fiddle returned to me!"

"WHAT?" Hellboy exclaimed, nearly dropping the fiddle. He threw the fiddle down in front of the old man. "Have the damn thing back. I'm getting the hell out of here. Screw the skunk apes!"

Hellboy jumped down on the raft, nearly toppling off. He broke the rope, still tied to the tree root, in one pull. Over the crying of night birds, the man's voice rose in laughter.

"Still frightened? Still think you're going to lose to me again Satan?" he howled.

"No, I just think I'll rather be watching a rerun of Heehaw in a rundown motel than sitting on an island listening to some old kook say how he made a deal with the Devil," Hellboy said, pushing off shore. The man kept laughing and laughing. Hellboy felt he was still laughing when the island was nothing more than an indistinguishable shadow in the darkness.

Hellboy came to the dock and eagerly jumped onto it when only a few feet away from it. He tied the raft back up and started to trot down the worn boards when a sound like laughter rose above the rhythms of the swamp. It was deeper and throaty. If laugher could ever sound sadistic, that would the laugh. A scream, throaty and worn, ascended and died. Hellboy looked back and shook it off like the moisture of the swamp off his coat.

"Stupid bastard," he said, lighting up a cigar.

He tapped the ashes into the swamp water. He never realized how much the wind between the branches of the trees sounded like a violin playing desperately.


End file.
